McGuire’s Law

Recently Amazon released a new eBook Reader called the Kindle. Like virtually all eBook Readers released before it, Amazon’s product has faced a ton of skepticism. However, this new product has something different from all the others, and for that reason, the tech world is buzzing about the Kindle. In fact, they’re not only buzzing; they’re buying. Amazon sold out the initial run of the product in the first week.

So what’s the big deal?

For the past couple of years I’ve been talking about the Law of Mobility - that the value of any product or service increases with it’s mobility. I’ve hypothesized that the falling cost of adding wireless technology into products and the increased value provided by mobility would lead to wireless technology being built into virtually every information-rich product, just as microprocessors have been built into so many products.

And that’s exactly what makes the Kindle so exciting. The product has mobile broadband connectivity from Sprint built in. Amazon customers select what books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs they want to read, pay for them through their Amazon account, and download them directly to the Kindle.

This is the first mass market consumer electronics device with mobile broadband built in, but it won’t be the last. A big part of Sprint’s 4G Xohm plans are to similarly mobilize consumer electronics products. And it appears that Verizon similarly wants to play in this space, announcing this week that they will open their network to certified devices. A Dow Jones story recently discussed this emerging trend.

One of the interesting aspects of the Kindle is that the eBook Reader is not yet a successful product category. If the Kindle becomes a hit, it would be a powerful validation of the Law and the Mobility Revolution.

Of course, mobilizing the eBook isn’t a simple process. In The Power of Mobility, I describe the seven steps that a company must take as they mobilize a product, service, or process. Amazon has done a great job of addressing the first six steps and has historically been one of the best at learning from customers, so I have confidence they will make the most of the Kindle opportunity.

The Kindle is definitely one to watch!

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Now playing: Art Garfunkel/Amy Grant - The Annunciation

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Beyond the Phone, Book, Opinion, The Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.